Recipients of the second annual Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism announced, honored at Design Legends Gala

NEW YORK, August 22, 2007. AIGA and the Winterhouse Institute are pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism, Jade Chang and Erica Nooney.  A program of AIGA, these annual awards were founded by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand of the Winterhouse Institute to recognize excellence in writing about design and to encourage the development of voices under 40 engaged in critical thinking about design and visual culture in the United States. The two awards will be presented at the fourth annual AIGA Design Legends Gala on September 19, 2007, in New York City.

The Writing Award—open to writers, critics, scholars, historians, journalists and designers, in the amount of $5,000—was awarded to Jade Chang for her three submissions: “Learning to Love the Mini-mall,” “Made in Hollywood” and “Behind the Glass Curtain.”

Chang is the West Coast editor of Metropolis magazine. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and the BBC, and was a recipient of the Sundance Arts Writing Fellowship. She graduated from Cornell University with majors in English and government. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is also working on a novel.

The Education Award—open to undergraduate or graduate students whose use of writing, in the interest of making visual work or scholarship or cultural observation, demonstrates extraordinary originality and promise, in the amount of $1,000—was awarded to Erica Nooney for her submission, “The Silence of the Swastika: Uncovering Absence and De-mythologizing Modernism in Contemporary Graphic Design Discourse.”

Nooney has an MA in English, with a concentration in cultural studies, from Kansas State University and a BFA in visual communication design from the University of Dayton. She is beginning her PhD in cultural studies this fall as a fellow at SUNY Stony Brook. Her research interests include graphic design history, education and professional construction, as well as queer theory, film theory, pop culture studies and new media.

The awards were judged by three distinguished writers and editors, each of whom is renowned for exceptional writing about design and visual culture: Allison Arieff, former editor-in-chief of Dwell and current designer-in-residence at IDEO; Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture; and Bruce Sterling, science fiction novelist and blogger at Wired.com.

“As it’s our second year hosting the competition, we were encouraged by the overwhelming quality of the submissions in both the professional and student categories,” notes Winterhouse partner and Design Observer co-founder William Drenttel, who also chaired this year’s judging. “The jury was impressed with the energy of the writing—and the range of approaches to design and approaches to writing. Furthermore, we were surprised by the technical quality of the writing, the maturity of prose and style in so many of the entries. The recipients, Jade and Erica, were selected unequivocally by this year’s panel, and we feel that both of these young writers hold great promise to grow as essayists and critics.”

The awards are supported by the generosity of more than 50 benefactors, including schools and universities, design firms and individuals, print and online media, and paper and printing benefactors. Through their generosity, the awards are financially supported for the next five years. Submissions for next year’s awards will be accepted starting in March 2008.

More than 500 leaders of design, creative, business and education organizations from around the world are expected to attend the glamorous Design Legends Gala, which benefits the ongoing celebration of design excellence. Funds raised at this year’s Gala help support the AIGA American Design Archives, the Worldstudio AIGA Scholarship program, AIGA’s Diversity Archive and the Legacy endowment to secure the future of the organization.

About AIGA
AIGA, the professional association for design, is the oldest and largest membership association for design professionals engaged in the discipline, practice and culture of designing. Its mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.

The organization was founded as the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1914. Since then, it has become the preeminent professional association for communication designers, broadly defined. In the past decade, designers have increasingly been involved in creating value for clients (whether public or business) through applying design thinking to complex problems, even when the outcomes may be more strategic, multidimensional and conceptual than what most would consider traditional communication design. AIGA now represents more than 20,000 designers of all disciplines through national activities and local programs developed by more than 55 chapters and 200 student groups.

AIGA supports the interests of professionals, educators and students who are engaged in the process of designing. The association is committed to stimulating thinking about design, demonstrating the value of design, and empowering success for designers throughout the arc of their careers.

More information may be found at www.aiga.org.
For further information, please contact:
Katie English
AIGA | the professional association for design
Tel 212 710 3136   Fax 212 807 1799
katie_english@aiga.org